Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abortion, Assisted Reproductive Technologies, FsQCA Analysis of Reproductive Policies

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Describes an intervention program to increase community participation to improve women’s reproductive health. Involvement of partners, men and women discussing on RH in their groups, timely referral of high risk cases and community sensitization came out to be the most effective strategy to reduce maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity,

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study examines recent French bioethics laws governing the uses of new reproductive and genetic technologies (NRGTs)—including in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, pre-natal diagnostics, sex selection, and cloning—in light of feminist claims to women’s rights, especially a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. To this end, the study explores two interrelated questions: First, to what extent have French feminists supported NRGT development and treatment, and, second, to what extent French national bioethics debates, laws and policies reflect feminist reactions to NRGTs? The investigation of these questions is informed by recent theories of state feminism that show how national policy debates are gendered by particular sets of feminist ideas and how policy choices resulting from these debates turn some of these ideas into law (McBride Stetson and Mazur 1995). Some of the most pressing feminist concerns in this area include women’s loss of control over their bodies and fertility, women’s exploitation and commercialization of their bodies, and women’s health risks from NRGTs.
The analysis of pronouncements by French feminist writers, researchers, and policy-makers reveals a multiplicity of feminist stances on NRGTs, showing keenly how feminists contest what constitutes effective “feminist” public policies to illuminate the fact that these policies are subject to shifting political contestations, rather than the reflection of a fixed set of “feminist” ideas. While contemporary French feminists grapple with the potential merits and dangers of NRGTS, the study shows that feminists generally seem to support NRGTs, as long as French law protects women’s reproductive autonomy. Seen in this light, France’s strong sense of the right to procreate through facilitation of access to NRGTs, is not a contradiction of France’s strong social and legal support for women’s reproductive freedom, but rather enables French lawmakers to regulate NRGTs more effectively.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Technoscientific innovations continue to transform the markers of kinship as new social groups participate in their consumption. From 1970s "turkey baster babies" created by lesbians "doing-it-themselves" to gay men "cruising to familyland" (Stacey 2003) through surrogacy, technoscience figures centrally in the construction of new kinship forms. In 2003 the Raellian religious cult reported that the second cloned child was born to a lesbian couple. Real or imagined, apocalypse and possibility are complexly woven into these technoscientific cultural narratives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines processes of "techno-semen" donor selection for assisted reproduction among lesbians. I found that lesbians actively construct kinship as affinity-ties, relatedness made possible by shared biological, cultural, and/or social attributes. As kinship is constructed, futures are imagined that hold possibilities for solidifying heteronormativity and for queering reproduction and kinship.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: (to be uploaded)